


Whack One Mole, Two More Shall Take its Place

by girlinstory



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Captain America Steve Rogers, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Gen, Modern AU, Modern Bucky Barnes, and he gets one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-05-25 03:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14968121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlinstory/pseuds/girlinstory
Summary: The Avengers had been hunting Hydra ever since the Battle at the Triskelion, and it wasn't like cutting heads off the Lernaean Hydra. It was like playing **********ing Whack-a-Mole. Set after CAWS. Rated for Steve's language. Yes, you heard me.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is a Modern!Bucky, Cap!Steve AU where Bucky was born in the future, but everything else is canon.

_Cut off one head, two more shall take its place._

The Avengers had been hunting Hydra ever since the Battle at the Triskelion, and it wasn't like cutting heads off the Lernaean Hydra. It was like playing motherfucking Whack-a-Mole.

The team had stopped pretending to be shocked by Steve's language after the sixth abandoned base. There was nothing that brought out Steve's inner sailor quite like finding out he had lain down his life for motherfucking bupkis.

The _twelfth_ abandoned base was in Georgia- Russia, Georgia, not The Devil Went Down to Georgia, although Steve was starting to think that song got the wrong Georgia.

They found the charred remains of shredded documents, because NASA wasn't the only organization that valued redundancy.

They found an electric chair, and how many people had Hydra been executing that they didn't want to waste the bullets?

They found an armory, stocked with everything from siege artillery to crossbows. Clint made an O Face (Steve would forever regret the day he mistyped "modern dictionary" into Google), and Natasha said, "Keep it in your pants."

"I wanna' keep it in my pants," said Clint.

They were ready to bomb the bejesus out of the base, and maybe all of Georgia, no one would blame Steve if his hand slipped, when Tony's scans picked up a heat signature. It was several floors below ground, but the body burned bright. Ten degrees warmer than average.

Just like Steve.

 _Probably a fever_ , thought Steve. Except that a body temperature of 108 degree should have been accompanied by convulsions. This body was so still that Steve would have thought it dead if it weren't showing up Day-Glo Orange.

The Avengers trekked down to the sub-basement, past the terminals that had self-destructed before they could read more than, "Asset transported for stripping, cleaning, and recalibration. Last known malfunction occurred at 1600 hours on-"

They could have destroyed the terminals _before_ they abandoned the base. Nazis were the biggest fucking drama queens. They were probably hoping to take someone out in the blast, but by the fourth base, the Avengers knew to hide as soon as they saw a computer (and Steve did not do that normally, fuck you very much, Tony.)

The sub-basement was full of cages.

Most of them were empty. All of them were empty of anything alive, until they got to the last one on the left.

There was a man.

Sorry, Ma, sorry God, but he was one of the most beautiful people Steve had ever seen. He couldn't help noticing, even with the matted hair, and blood, and hair matted with blood.

The man was pale, like he hadn't seen the sun in years. His skin was almost as silvery as the metal arm, and even that was beautiful. Curved plates protruding from curved scars. Surgical scars.

Steve tried to break the bars of the cage, but they were too strong, even for him. Tony had to use lasers.

"Careful," said Natasha. "He was in a reinforced cage, and those handcuffs aren't the kind with the handy little safety release they started making after _Gerald's Game_. Whoever he is, Hydra considered him a threat."

"Good enough for me." Steve shouldered through the broken bars. He and Tony checked the man for injuries before rolling him onto the retractable stretcher Natasha had pulled out of… somewhere.

They didn't find any injuries. Either the blood wasn't his, or he had already healed.

Even unconscious, his heart rate was a match for Steve's, whose brain skipped over the implications of that.

Steve's brain had been doing a lot of that since it was defrosted. Skipping over anything too difficult to comprehend, like a groove on a record. _You've been asleep for seventy years._ Skip. _Everyone you know is dead._ Skip. _Hydra still exists._ Skip. _A Nazi is president._ Skip. _You died for nothing._ Skip. _Potato chips come in cappuccino flavor._ Skip.

Natasha had unfolded the stretcher without being asked, so Steve left the handcuffs on without being asked. Good people could still be dangerous, especially if they were cornered, and you didn't get much more concerned than a _cage_. Steve had nearly punched out a nurse when he first woke up in the future (she was wearing an underwire bra, okay, it was weird.)

He spent most of the quinjet ride home flashing back to Azanno, the suicide mission he'd gone on to rescue the 107th, because if he'd really gone through Project Rebirth to become a glorified showgirl (no offense intended, because Marjorie had taught Steve half of what he knew about how to throw a punch and Stella had taught him everything he knew about contouring), then yeah, suicide seemed like a decent Plan B.

Thank god for the Howlies. They'd kept him alive long enough to die for-

Skip.

The man woke up thirteen hours after being hooked up to a saline drip in the medical wing of the Avengers Tower. As soon as he was secure, Steve had insisted on removing the handcuffs. Jarvis could shut down the medical wing if there was an emergency. Steve sent the nurses home. He could check a monitor, change a drip.

He sent the rest of the Avengers to get some sleep, knowing perfectly well they wouldn't. Sure enough, they returned to the medical room thirteen hours and three minutes later. Thor was still in full uniform, including the cape. Natasha was carrying a cup of Russian tea. Tony was in his pajamas, but he wore those to Senate hearings, so it didn't mean he'd been asleep. Clint came out the air vent, which meant he probably _had_ been asleep.

Steve chose to take that as a victory. He needed the win.

He had spent those three minutes reminding the man to breathe. The man had gone from unresponsive to alert in less than a second. His already-fast heart rate sped up so much that the monitor's beeps sounded more like a flat-line. His eyes darted from Natasha's Russian tea glass (which she took with jam, which was almost as bad as cappuccino potato chips) to the lightning bolt insignia on Thor's cape-pin-things (which used to be a triquetra, which had quietly disappeared after the Battle at the Triskelion).

Steve wondered what it was about tea and cape-pin-things that sent the man tailspinning into a panic attack, but he just said, "Breathe."

As soon as the man's heart rate slowed back down to still-really-fucking-fast, Tony said, "Hydra's going to come after you."

The man's heart rate sped up again. Steve may have sent Tony some strongly-worded thoughts about _not breathing_ , but no one in the future could read his body language, like it had changed along with slang. Fuck Twitter, and fuck Skype, and fuck the entirety of modern technologically mediated-communication. There was a reason Steve was still fighting the good fight, and it wasn't just because he was still sort of on Plan B. He needed a whole fucking mission brief before people could understand him.

"Anything else would be- I think the technical term is 'too easy,' and that would go against the fundamental rules of the universe," said Tony.

 _There are still rules?_ thought Steve, but he just said, "Breathe."

"So we need to know exactly what they're coming after." When the man didn't answer, Tony said, "That's my polite way of asking what you are, because I have a guess, but Steve here is already kind of _seethey_ , and I don't want to poke the bear. See? I'm not even making that into a gay joke."

There was still no answer, unless you counted the frown of anyone who had been in the same room as Tony for more than a minute. Steve didn't. He had seen that frown on Dum-E, who didn't even have a face.

"Can you talk?"

Clint signed along with Steve, but the man's hands stayed in his lap. Metal and flesh.

After a moment, he nodded jerkily, like a bobblehead with a broken spring.

"Is it hard to talk?" asked Steve.

Another one of those nods.

"Is there anything I can do to make it easier?"

The man met Steve's eyes, and he started to understand why people in the future thought Twitter was a valid form of communication. He didn't need a hundred and forty characters to know what the man was saying.

He sent back a look that said, _Just me?_

The man gave a one-shouldered shrug, like the metal arm was too heavy to lift. "It's not- I don't know them."

Steve could actually see Tony bite off the have-you-been-living-under-a-rock joke because the answer was: yes.

"Everyone knows you," said the man, "So I know- I know you're not them."

Steve's brain skipped over the whole not-knowing-the-Avengers thing. That meant the man had been living under a rock for at least three years. Three years with Hydra. Steve could barely stand three minutes in a room with Schmidt, which was only sort of because the room had been burning down around them.

Three years must have felt like thirty.

Steve wanted to say something comforting, but he was from 1940. His idea of comfort was a slug to the shoulder.

"We'll still be recording you," said Tony.

"You don't have to," said Steve. "I have an eidetic memory."

"It's okay," said the man, and there was a hint of Brooklyn drawl under the rough disuse in his voice. A hint of home.

The Avengers filed out, leaving Steve alone with the man. They didn't look happy (except for Thor, who always looked happy), but they didn't argue (except for Tony, who always argued).

"What's your name?" asked Steve.

"I may have some useful intel," said the man. "Sometimes I overheard them talking. You don't watch what you say in front of the toaster. There were-"

Skip.

"-and I have an eidetic memory," the man was saying.

Steve had to remind himself to breathe. "You have-"

"They gave me a version of it," said the man, and he didn't have to say what it was. "I don't have the same strength, but body heat, metabolism, sleep cycles, and regenerative powers are comparable. They wanted a test subject that would imitate the primary variable."

The man sounded like he was reciting from that eidetic memory.

Steve wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he was sure he had to. This was too big for his brain to skip. This was the whole damn record.

So he asked, "To test what?"

"The chair." The man said the word like Steve used to curse. "It was- It was just a chair. With straps. But there was an attachment that delivered 500mA of direct current of electricity to the nervous system. Aggressive electroshock treatment. Other methods of conditioning included negative reinforcement and aversion therapy."

The man sounded like he was reciting from that eidetic memory again, mostly because the things he was saying were motherfucking _euphemisms_ for electricity, and torture, and more electricity.

"I take it back," Steve could hear Tony whisper through his headset. He'd forgotten to take it off after the mission. He realized he was still wearing his uniform too. They'd cleaned up the man, but some of his blood was still on Steve's gloves, because now there was no doubt the blood was his, and he had already healed. At least at Azzano, they had to take breaks so the men wouldn't die.

"I take it back," Tony whispered again. "There are no rules. Man, how is the hospital room not freaking you out?”

The man shrugged. “Hydra didn’t put me in beds. Well, not hospital beds.”

Even Natasha flinched. 

"They were trying to create a weapon," said the man.

"The arm?" Steve focused on the obvious because he couldn't quite wrap it around the idea of turning a man into a weapon. There were those who said he had been turned into a weapon, but what the man was describing sounded nothing like Project Rebirth.

He shook his head. "I think I lost the arm before they got me. Maybe when they got me. But they talked about replacing all my limbs. They wanted to wait until they could control me. I kept- They called it a malfunction."

That triggered something in Steve's memory, which for a moment he wished wasn't so good, and if he wished that, then how much this man feel?

_"Asset transported for stripping, cleaning, and recalibration. Last known malfunction occurred at 1600 hours on-"_

"The Asset?"

Bucky gave him a wry look, as if to say _pleased-ta-meet-ya_. "You read the reports."

"They destroyed most of- I thought they were talking about a _weapon_."

"They were."

It was like Steve's brain tried to skip, but got stuck in a groove instead.

_They were. They were. They were._

Then he realized it wasn't in his head. "They were- They were- close. If you hadn't-"

When the man's voice broke, Steve reached out to grab his hand.

The man stilled, like he was waiting to see what the touch would turn into. Something in Steve broke, but it wasn't his voice. He couldn't even find his voice.

Then the man squeezed his hand (Steve was kind of glad he'd grabbed the flesh one).

"I wasn't the weapon they wanted. You were. Technology these days- It's easier to make an Iron Man than a Captain America. The strength didn't matter. The symbol mattered. Captain America, fighting for Hydra. If it worked, they were going to use the chair on you and terminate me. Well, one of 'em wanted to make me your sidekick."

"What's your name?" Steve asked again, and this time, the man answered.

"I think it's Bucky."

Steve felt his face screw up.

"Yeah, I know it's weird."

"That's not- You think?"

This wasn't a cute little knowledge gap, like when Steve attacked the Gamecube because he thought it was a Tesseract. This was Bucky's identity. Steve had thought everyone he knew was dead, but even when no one else knew Steve Rogers, at least _he_ did.

"Sometimes the handlers would call me that. Like they were fucking with me. But it made the scientists mad. They were trying to make me forget."

"Forget what?"

"Everything." Bucky gave that little shrug again, like it was no big deal, even though it was… everything. "They wiped my mind. Like a hard drive." He looked up. "Do you know what that is?"

Even after all that Bucky had been through, he still thought to ask...

"I don't know much about hard drives," said Steve, "but I know it's hard to delete anything for good. It just gets overwritten. The information's still there."

The smile that Bucky gave him was small, but nothing less than blinding.

"I know you're not Hydra," Bucky said softly, maybe to himself, maybe to Steve, because only someone with supersoldier hearing could have heard him, "because they spent seven years trying to find a way to make you Hydra."

Seven years…

They had taken Bucky before Steve was even out of the ice. That either spoke to Hydra's dedication or their intel. Either way, it meant Bucky had spent seven years being electrocuted, and tortured, and electrocuted more.

Seven years must have felt like seventy.

Bucky leaned forward and rested his forehead against Steve's shoulder.

"Sorry," he said. "It's just- It's- If you're here, I know it didn't work."

Steve placed a hand on the back of Bucky's head, not holding it in place, but letting him know that it was okay if he wanted to.

"You can stay here. I mean, not here as in the hospital wing. My floor has a guest room. Or Tony has guest floors. I think he has a guest tower somewhere in Queens."

"Don't be ridiculous, Cap." Tony said. "It's in Dumbo."

"Tony?" asked Bucky, seemingly content for the moment to stay, not only here as in the hospital wing, but here as in Steve's shoulder.

Shield had subjected Steve half a dozen seminars on appropriate workplace contact, like they thought just because he was from 1940, he would go around goosing agents. If he'd tried that on Stella or Marjorie, they would have stabbed him with a high heel, serum or no serum, and he would have had it coming. Sarah Rogers had raised him better than that.

Steve wrapped his other arm around Bucky's waist.

Sorry, Ma, sorry Shield, but Steve needed a hug, and if he needed one, then _how the fuck_ must Bucky feel?

"Tony Stark," he explained.

Bucky frowned a little. Steve could feel it. "The weapons manufacturer?"

"A lot has changed in the last seven years," said Steve. "I never thought I'd be saying this, but... I'll catch you up."


	2. Chapter Two

"You don't have to stay," said Bucky, contradicting himself somewhat by saying it into Steve's shoulder.

"I don't mind."

Bucky pulled back. His gaze went from the toes of Steve's boots to the top of his head. Steve had gotten a lot of looks like that a lot since the serum, and they always made him blush, but usually for different reasons. He was very aware of his the blood on his gloves, the bags under his eyes, the five-o'clock-of-the-next-day shadow on his jaw.

"How long have you been here?" asked Bucky.

Steve waved a hand. "When you're as old as I am, time is relative."

"Is that why you take so long in the bathroom?" Tony's voice came through the headset, and Steve hoped Bucky's hearing wasn't quite as good as his.

Bucky kept looking at him. He didn't even have to say anything.

"No long," said Steve. "Really."

Steve had always been very bad at dodging.

That was why he had the shield.

"Oh, that's- that's comforting," said Bucky.

"What?" asked Steve.

"You're a terrible liar." Bucky patted Steve on the chest and promptly passed out.

Steve stayed. He wanted Bucky to have a familiar face when he woke up. Since Bucky had amnesia, it was pretty much down to him or Britney Spears, and she was on tour.

When Bucky woke up, they got him a shrink who talked about Trauma-with-a-big-T and Trauma-with-a-little-t. Dr. Monroe said Bucky's trauma was pretty much TRAUMA-WITH-ALL-CAPS, so it was okay if his coping mechanisms were unorthodox.

(Bucky's coping mechanisms included a lot of readily-accessible edged weapons and Disney/Pixar movies, which didn't seem all that unorthodox to Steve.)

Tony, Natasha, and Fury pooled their frankly alarming resources to scan military databases, law enforcement databases, and a database for something Fury called "The Raft," which Steve very much did not want to know more about, ever. But Bucky was obviously (hopefully) a nickname and if he'd been given any sort of reconstructive surgery, there wouldn't even be any scars.

Steve had asked about the surgical scars on his shoulder, and Bucky had explained that the metal arm kept the skin in a constant state of damaging and healing, like Deadpool. (Apparently Deadpool also would have been a familiar face, but probably not one Bucky would have wanted to wake up to.)

The doctors took some (non magnetic) scans while Bucky held very, very still and hummed Hello, Dolly! under his breath, but the arm was so deeply embedded in his nervous system that removal was all but impossible.

When they told him, he gave that little one-shouldered shrug, and now Steve knew it was because his shoulder was a constant Screaming Face on Tony's Emoji Pain Scale (Bucky had pointed to the Weary Face, but he was also a terrible liar; Hydra had taken away his ability to lie in 2009.)

Bucky shrugged again when they told him their searches had come back with zero hits. Not even Google had any suggestions. Tony suggested the possibility that Hydra has Erased Bucky à la Arnold Schwarzenegger (the only part of that Steve had understood was "à la" but he got the gist anyway).

"Why find a family just to disappoint them?" Bucky asked, and the only reason Steve's heart didn't break was because Bucky had finished it off earlier that week when he tried to discreetly wipe his eyes during WALL-E.

Then Bucky looked horrified, and Steve wondered if he had recovered another memory of Hydra's torture until he said, "I can move out- I'll- I didn't mean to overstay my welcome," and nope, turned out there was a little piece of Steve's heart that Bucky hadn't broken yet.

It had taken Steve the better part of an hour to convince him that he wasn't overstaying his welcome. For someone who had been physically restrained for the better part of a decade, Bucky had some serious abandonment issues.

He moved out of the hospital wing and into a guest floor. Steve was secretly a little disappointment that Bucky hadn't moved into his guest room, but at least it wasn't Dumbo. All he had to do was take the elevator up one floor, and Bucky would be there, watching WALL-E or the wall, depending on whether it was Good Day or a Bad Day. (Dr. Monroe, again.)

Sometimes Bucky wasn't there. He was in the gym, spotting Natasha (he never joined them when they sparred), in the air vents, napping with Clint (he never slept out in the open), in the lab, watching Tony work on a new tuning fork gyroscope for the quinjet (he never let Tony work on his arm, despite Tony's increasingly ridiculous bribes; last Steve heard he was up a private island.)

The only Avenger he didn't spend much time with was Thor, which Steve figured was down to the electricity thing. (Tony tried to give Bucky a static shock once and nearly lost a finger. He did lose all his socks. They were hidden in Steve's underwear drawer until Natasha sent him a DM saying that Tony would definitely find them there. Steve did not ask any of the obvious questions, not the least of which was when Natasha joined Tumblr. He just moved the socks to his record collection.)

One day, he came home from a run to find the Avengers telling Bucky about Steve's habit of jumping out of airplanes without parachutes, Bucky growing gradually paler until he looked almost as bad as he had when they first found him (well, not bad, but- Sorry Ma, sorry God).

Steve pitched a fit.

(He waited until Bucky left to queue up their next Disney/Pixar movie, because Bucky was still recovering from TRAUMA and did not need to see Captain America pitch a fit).

"Relax Steve," said Natasha. "It's not like we were giving him the shovel talk."

Steve blushed.

One of the Nazi practices Steve had hated most, after genocide, was book-burning, but had Urban Dictionary been an actual book, Steve would have burned it, if only for purification purposes.

Although it did come in handy sometimes. As long as he never searched for any phrase containing the word "handy."

"Of course not," said Tony. "I would dissolve him in lye. Less evidence."

Natasha seemed to consider this.

"Same," she said.

"What can I say?" asked Tony, and the answer to that was always: a lot. "I like the guy. I would like him if he killed my parents. He's likable. He never takes the last Poptart. He's good with a wrench. He gets along with Dum-E. Although he has a metal arm, and Dum-E is a metal arm, so I should have seen that coming. Let's hope they don't get along too well.. I mean, what would the children look like?"

"Probably metal arms," said Natasha, in a reasonable voice.

"Robots cannot procreate, Tony," said Thor, in what should have been a reasonable voice.

"Is that a challenge?" asked Tony, in what was not even in the same voting district as a reasonable voice.

"No," everyone else said in unison, because even the Avengers could be a little bit reasonable when it came to world domination by maternal robots.

"Don't you like him, Steve?" asked Natasha, as though the segue into robot m-preg had never happened (and seriously, fuck Urban Dictionary).

She sounded like she was joking, but Steve didn't get it. When most people didn't get a joke, they laughed anyway. Steve lived with the Avengers, so when he didn't get a joke, he looked disapproving anyway.

"Yeah," Tony grinned, which meant he got the joke, or he'd accidentally inhaled some nitrous again. "Don't you like Bucky?"

"That's not important," said Steve.

"He's bad at dodging," said Natasha.

"That's why he has the shield," said Tony.

"It's Bucky's job to get better," said Steve. "It's not his job to be likeable. He doesn't even know who he is for God's sake. How would you feel if you couldn't remember anything except Britney Spears and Deadpool?"

Tony waved a hand. "That's just Friday nights."

Steve left the room without another word and joined Bucky for Up.

He was taking his job of catching Bucky up very seriously. He'd started with the Disney/Pixar pantheon, because Bucky needed a healthy emotional outlet that didn't involve sticking forks in outlets (although Tony swore that had been a lab accident), but he also needed a happy ending.

And Bucky had really nice hair, so Tangled probably wouldn't give him a complex. (Flynn Rider was an unrealistic standard of beauty, okay?)

Steve had purposely spent the first five minutes of Up in the kitchen to give Bucky some privacy.

When he came back out, Bucky was still crying so Steve put down the Totino's Pizza Rolls and wrapped an arm around Bucky's shoulder.

Steve was touch starved.

Physical contact between men had been more common in his day. Now all he got was the occasional slap on the back from Tony and one actual slap from Natasha (his hand had slipped during sparring). He had gone to the Halloween Greenwich Village parade last year, because it was the only night he could go out in public without anyone asking for an autograph. Natasha had slapped an Elmo for groping her, but Steve was pretty sure it was accident. The way people were packed into the street, Steve was feeling up at least three people.

That was the most Steve had been touched since he woke up.

Touch was the only thing Hydra hadn't starved Bucky of, but every touch for the past seven years had been a Bad Touch, so he was at least Good-Touch Starved. (Dr. Monroe again.)

When Steve wrapped an arm around his shoulder, Bucky leaned into it, burying his face in the joint between Steve's shoulder and neck. (Tony liked to joke that Hydra had made Bucky a vampire, but Bucky just bared his, okay, yeah, kind of pointy teeth at him.)

Despite being born half a century after Steve, and having no shared life experiences (that he could remember), Bucky and Steve were two peas in a pod. Mostly because Bucky was the only one who didn't make fun of him for saying things like "two peas in a pod."

Bucky thought bananas tasted weird (although he thought everything tasted weird, because of the feeding tube). He thought Facebook was stupid (although he liked MySpace). He took a lot of naps (although they with Clint).

Steve had never even heard of MySpace. He had asked Tony about it, even though he really should have learned by now.

"It was like Facebook, but whenever you opened a new page, music started playing, and you could never find the pause button."

"That sounds awful," said Steve.

"And the music was usually 50 Cent."

Steve squinted. "They charged for it?"

He was just surprised you could still buy anything for fifty cents.

During the credits, Bucky told Steve's shoulder, "I want to go outside."

"You wanna' get your Wilderness Explorer Badge?" Steve teased, and Bucky huffed a laugh.

"I wanna' see what's changed."

Steve hummed. "Coney Island?"

Bucky sat up to grab the remote, but Steve stopped him. He couldn't remember if there was a scene after the credits, like in Toy Story. Steve identified with Tour Guide Barbie.

Bucky let Steve pull him back against his shoulder. "I don't think sand is good for the arm."

"That's why you turned down the private island," said Tony.

"Stop spying on us," said Steve, in the general direction of the ceiling, before turning back to Bucky. "We can stay on the boardwalk. Eat a hot dog, ride the Cyclone, watch the freak show."

"Maybe not the freak show. Summer makes Clint nostalgic for his circus days. He keeps threatening to run away. Mostly just when Tony takes the last Poptart, but better not to risk it. But the hot dog and the Cyclone- they sound nice."

"Maybe not in that order," said Steve.

"I dunno'. I throw up most days. It'd be nice to have a good reason."

"So you wanna' invite everybody?" asked Steve.

"Tony knows about it," Bucky reminded him.

Some days Steve felt like a microwave burrito- defrosted on the outside, but still frozen on the inside.

When he heard how well Bucky already knew the other Avengers, he felt warmth spread from the toes of his boots to the top of his head.

Steve ran a hand through Bucky's really nice hair. "Coney Island hasn't changed much in the past seventy years, so it probably won't be a huge culture shock for you- Oh, but they closed Astroland in 2008."

Bucky looked devastated, and yeah, two peas in a pod.

Steve only realized he'd said that out loud when Tony asked, "Yeah, but what kind of pod?"


	3. Chapter Three

They ate hot dogs and rode the Cyclone in that order, and Bucky threw up for a good reason. Steve held back his really nice hair.

They rode the haunted train, and Natasha scared the actors so bad that they had to shut down the ride for an hour.

Bucky wore SPF 100 sunscreen, and Tony made more vampire jokes.

Thor lent a hand when the lights on the Parachute Jump went out. While Thor worked, Bucky made casual conversation with the operator, repeating the name of the ride in increasingly pointed tones until Steve made his escape on the pretense of buying cotton candy (they had thrown up the hot dogs, after all.)

Tony tried to redesign the Cyclone. They stopped him from making any changes, _while people were still on it_ , but he walked away with a new contract for Pepper.

Bruce ate cotton candy and won a stuffed Oscar the Grouch at the beanbag toss like a normal human being.

Clint tried to join freak show.

It was the best day Steve could remember having in any century. It felt like when he got the serum and could suddenly see color for the first time. Everything went from shades of gray to reds, and blues, and greens, and okay, the green was Bucky’s puke, but _still_ .  

The only gray in sight was Bucky. He smiled, and laughed, and comforted the actors from the haunted train, but through it all he kept looking around like he was in a foreign country where he wasn’t a hundred percent sure the natives wouldn’t eat him.

Also, he was literally kind of gray.

Steve nudged Bucky’s leg with his own while they were on the Q train to Clearwater Avenue. He manspreading a little, but Bucky didn’t seem to mind.

Anyway, Natasha was taking up a whole row. She was very flexible, but after a certain point, she was just showing off.

“It that different than you remember?” he asked.

Bucky gave his one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t really.”

When Steve woke up, he had gone to his old neighborhood and drawn it the way he remembered. He knew the McDonald’s used to be a haberdashery, and the massage parlor (happy ending) used to be a bookstore. He couldn’t imagine feeling the _wrong_ without actually knowing what was wrong.

Bucky had a little color in his face by the time Steve slung an arm around his shoulder on the Wonder Wheel. He, Bucky, and Tony were in one carriage. Thor, Clint, and Natasha had the one below them. (Bruce had remained on the ground.)

“Wonder Wheel was here when I was a kid,” said Steve. “It’s my favorite.”

“It’s boring,” said Tony, who was playing Angry Birds on his phone. He kept trying to get Sam and Clint to play with him “for authenticity.”

Steve ignored him. “You know it has a perfect safety record, even after all these years?”

“Surprised it’s your favorite then,” said Bucky.

“I’m not _that_ bad.”

“Then prove it. Quit jumpin’ outta’ planes without parachutes.”

“Fine, _Ma_ ,” Steve muttered. For some reason, it was easier to agree when Bucky asked. Probably because he phrased it a a challenge. “The Cyclone was here when I was a kid too. Told you Coney Island hasn’t changed much.”

“Yeah,” said Bucky, “but hey, when did they shut down Luna Park?”

“You mean Astroland? I told you. 2008.”

“No, he means Luna Park. It’s back that way.” Tony pointed through the grates of the carriage, and suddenly Steve felt like an idiot for taking Bucky on a ride with a motherfucking _cage_ , but Bucky had been doing fine, doing, better, until now.

Bucky frowned. “No, not- the old Luna Park. The one with- with the electric tower?”

“That-” Steve had asked the same question on his first trip to Coney Island after the war. “It burned down. Bucky. It burned down in 1944.”

He could see his wide eyes reflected in Bucky’s wide eyes.

Even Tony looked surprised, phone hanging limply in his hand. Then he said, “That makes perfect sense!”

“It does?” asked Steve.

“I can find anyone. Waldo, D. B. Cooper, the Zod- Oh, that’s classified. I didn’t say that. But I couldn’t find you, Bucky. And you think bananas taste weird, you nap all the time, you’re besties with _Steve._ It makes perfect sense.”

“What does?” asked Steve, because it definitely wasn’t Tony.

Tony pointed an accusatory finger at Bucky. “You’re a dirty old man.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “Okay, I don’t know about dirty. What you and Steve get up to in your free time is your business. But yeah. I think maybe, um, Hydra had you for more than seven years. Like, a lot more.”

This was not a conversation Steve wanted to have in the Wonder Wheel, but it wasn’t really a conversation he wanted to have at all, so he said, “How sure are you about this?”

“Scientifically? Not at all. But I have one of those, um, gut feeling things, and I’m 99% sure that isn’t just the hot dogs. Scientifically. I’ve done, um, experiments in how many hot dogs I can eat. With um, multiple control groups and video documentation. They’re on my, um, YouTube channel, after the sex videos. Both are tagged with “wiener” so be careful.”

Tony rambled when he was freaking out.

He also rambled when he was bored, hungry, tired, or a little constipated (Steve wished he didn’t know that), but he usually didn’t have to pause for breath, let alone fillers.

Bucky didn’t ramble when he was freaking out. He went quiet, like he was flashing back to days they only took off the mask when they wanted _access_ to his _mouth_ , and Steve had been the one throwing up after that story.

Steve went quiet too. Even _Tony_ went quiet eventually.

There was nothing they could do without proof, and that would have to wait until they were back at the Tower. Tony would run Bucky’s face through older databases, ones with scanned paper instead of digital records. Black and white photos. Even if they did find proof, there was probably nothing they could do. Bucky was more alone than ever.

Except he wasn’t, because Steve-

The carriage rocked. Steve braced the arm that wasn’t around Bucky against the grating. It was yellow, paint chipped by the sandy winds of the Atlantic. That was easier to focus on than the men in black tac suits jogging that slow motion soldier/ _Baywatch_ jog past the shooting gallery, assault rifles incongruous next to the BB guns.

“We shouldn’t have tried to get your Wilderness Explorer Badge,” Steve whispered.

There was nothing he could do, and wasn’t that the theme of the day? He could tear open the yellow grating and jump out of the carriage, but that would just leave Bucky and Tony exposed at a hundred and fifty feet, because of course, they had stopped at the top of the Wonder Wheel. Also, Bucky had made him promise not to jump out of planes without parachutes, and he probably wouldn’t make an exception for ferris wheels.

Steve didn’t have a parachute. He didn’t even have his shield. It was at the Tower. He only hoped Tony had brought at least one piece of the Iron Man suit.

In his day, three-piece suits were the fashion, so Steve had an instinctive distrust for anyone in a two-piece suit, but he had to admit that Tony made a 3,021 piece-suit _work_.

The men in tac suits surrounded the Wonder Wheel. One of them fell down, an arrow through his neck, and Steve took a moment to admire Clint and Natasha’s shared ability to hide equipment in tight outfits.

He didn’t want to know how they did it, but he admired it.

One of the men in tac suits shot at the Cyclone, which was still full of screaming civilians, although the screaming had taken a different tone.

Nazis.

Fucking drama queens.

It was almost awkward waiting for the Wonder Wheel to descend. Coney Island Security hovered around the perimeter, obviously aware that they were outnumbered and outgunned. Steve could hear sirens in the distance, but he was the only one who could. They were still a good ten minutes out, fifteen with New York traffic. The Wonder Wheel was slow, but it wasn’t that slow. Their ride was almost over.

“Wonder Wheel still boring?” Steve asked through gritted teeth.  

Tony was wearing a helpless expression, which he did not make _work_.

“Just let- let them-” Bucky was struggling with words worse than he had in weeks. Steve ached for him. That didn’t stop Steve from interrupting him.

“ _No_.”

“Steve-”

“No, Bucky. I’m not letting them take you.”

“There are civilians,” said Bucky, his voice suddenly steady as the Wonder Wheel, with its perfect safety record, even after all these years. Except when people were shooting at it.

Steve’s brain hadn’t been skipping as much lately, but it skipped over the fact that Bucky used the word “civilians” as if he wasn’t one.

“Bucky-”

“There are kids, Stevie. You let them take me. Then you come for me. They don’t know about the tracker Tony slipped in my sushi last week.”

“You weren’t supposed to know about that either,” said Tony.

“I’m brain damaged, not stupid,” said Bucky. “You eat sushi in one bite. You don’t swallow it whole.”

Steve could feel the tactician and friend in him fight it out, but the tactician fought dirty.

There were civilians upon which the soldiers had already displayed no hesitance to fire. Unarmed (except for Clint), the Avengers were as outgunned and outnumbered as _amusement park security_. Maybe the Big Guy could do some damage, but that brought them back around to civilians. Some of the damage would be collateral, and none of it would be acceptable.

On the other hand, if Hydra took Bucky, they could track him back to their base. An actual Hydra base that hadn’t been abandoned, no burned and shredded documents, no self-destructing terminals. Intel.

A victory.

They needed the win.

“I trust you,” said Bucky, and Steve could tell it was true, because Hydra had taken away his ability to lie in 2009.

“I will come for you,” Steve promised, and Bucky knew it was true, because Steve never had that ability to begin with.

The smile Bucky gave him was small, but nothing less than blinding.

“I know.”

Steve would have thought he was doing _Star Wars_ except they were still on Disney/Pixar.

In the end, it didn’t matter.

As soon as they stepped out of their carriage, one of the soldiers said, “Sputnik,” and Bucky dropped to the dirty amusement park ground.

Skip.

Steve didn’t fight like Captain America. He fought like a berserker (which he knew because they'd fought the Berzeker last month), no shield, just fists, and _righteous fury_.

He fought like Steve Rogers.

He took out a dozen soldiers before he got shot and dropped to the dirty amusement park ground right next to Bucky. Someone’s Laffy Taffy was stuck in his hair.

Usually a gunshot wound wasn’t enough to stop Steve, or even slow him down, but this one was lodged in his Achilles tendon. He tried to stand on it, tried to follow the soldiers that lifted Bucky by his armpits ( _Screaming Face Emoji_ ) and dragged him out of the park.

He couldn’t stop them, and even though that had been the plan, he felt like he was letting Bucky down in the worst possible way, which was letting Bucky down in any way at all.

Steve passed out, and even he didn’t know which kind of pain it was from.

Skip.


	4. Chapter Four

Steve woke up in the quinjet medbay, which was pretty much just a cot, a first aid kit, and a hangover recovery kit. Tony had added the hangover recovery kit. It was a party favor from a bachelor’s party he had attended or possibly danced at. It included aspirin, breath mints, bandaids, a sleep mask, and miniature airline bottles of Aviator gin, which came in a gold vinyl bag printed with the words Oh Shit Kit.

Someone had put the sleep mask on Steve. He didn’t feel inclined to remove it. He took a deep breath. Antiseptic or really bad gin. Either way, he wanted some.

The cot felt too soft to Steve, who was used to bedding that could rate on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness.

It didn’t have anything to do with being a soldier. He was Catholic, so he distrusted anything comfortable.  

He tried to sit up, but someone put their hand on his shoulder.

“Bucky,” he said, even though he could smell that it wasn’t. (He knew his enhanced sense of smell was creepy, but it didn’t stop him from inhaling when he was hugging Bucky, to the point that Bucky asked if the serum really had cured his asthma.)

He stopped trying to sit up. After the third try, he was just embarrassing himself.

“He’s awake.” That was Tony.

So really bad gin, then.

It was his hand on Steve’s shoulder, which was particularly embarrassing, considering his idea of exercise was running diagnostics.

Tony handed him a bottle of water from the Oh Shit Kit. Steve didn’t bother with the aspirin, but he did take the breath mint.

They were going to rescue Bucky, who was probably being subjected to TRAUMA and did not need to smell Captain America’s morning breath.

_Wait._

_Morning?_

“When-?”

“Don’t worry BFG. You’re not missing time. Well, not much. We’re in Russia.”

“Oh.” That made sense, so he asked, “BFG?”

“Big Friendly Giant.”

“Oh,” Steve said again. Tony had called him worse. Also, multiple syllables were really taking a lot out of him.

“You hit your head when you went down,” said Tony. “You weren’t wearing a helmet. Not even that cute one from the 43’ that wouldn’t have protected you from a fall off a tricycle, and seriously, what was Dad thinking? I get the wings, but why were they sticking out of top? You looked like a mailbox, and- Oh, will you play Angry Birds with me?”

“No.”

“Fine.” Tony pouted, and it looked indistinguishable from the duck-lips teenage girls did in their selfies with Steve. “How’re you feeling, Captain Jacked Sparrow?”

Tony had still called him worse. Half of Steve’s Time on Urban Dictionary was trying to decipher Tony’s nicknames for him. If he didn’t know… anything, he would have thought Tony was doing it for educational purposes.

Steve took off the sleep mask and squinted at the pain scale posted in the medbay.

“Poo.”

“Seriously, Steve.”

He studied at the pain scale again. It was an Emoji Pain Scale, because according to Tony, "a picture is worth a thousand swear words."

“Fine. Disappointed Face.”

“Well, that’s just your default,” said Tony. “You still up for the mission brief?

“Bucky,” said Steve.

Head trauma or no, this was getting embarrassing.

“Yes,” said Tony. “It is _little_ more complicated than that, Captain Obvious.”

Tony used the word “quantum” in conversations about laundry.  For him to call something complicated it must be…

“How complicated?”

“Hydra had Bucky for seventy years, and they made him this assassin who I’ve never heard of, but Natasha says is totally Dark Net Famous.”

“Tony,” said Natasha, from the front of the jet, with a clear note of _don’t-make-me-come-back-there_.

“What? It’s like ripping off a bandaid. Oh, that reminds me.” Tony took a bandaid from the Oh Shit Kit. It had the Hulk on it. He removed the bloody gauze from Steve’s leg, and applied the bandaid in its place.

So Steve had lost as least a little time. 

“There you go, Captain von Trapped in Ice. Bucky doesn’t remember being The Winter Soldier, because every time they put him in the field he malfunctioned and they wiped the mission. He assumed he never made it out of the lab. Like for example: He killed my parents. That’s okay; I like him anyway. He was supposed to kill me too, but he knocked himself out with the arm before he could complete the mission. According to the mission reports, they think it was because he didn’t like my music.”

Steve shook his head, not because he didn’t believe it, but because he hoped it would counter the spinning.

“Seven years ago, Obama won the election, and Bucky was stuck in cryo off and on for a couple of years while Hydra focused on starting rumors that the president didn’t have a birth certificate, which is ridiculous, because I showed Miss Everhart the one I made him at Build a Bear. Anyway, when you got defrosted in 2011, they also defrosted Bucky to see if they could get the Captain’s Chair ready for you.”

“How did he know about Britney Spears and Deadpool?” asked Steve, because he had apparently damaged the part of his brain that had _priorities_.

“I’m glad you asked, Cap Yo Ass,” said Tony. “That took some hardcore research. He and Deadpool got double booked on an assassination in Yemen, and we think he mentioned Britney because she was trying to sue Negasonic Teenage Warhead for stealing her look.”

“Oh,” said Steve, and he was not starting _that_ shit again, so he cleared his throat and asked, “When was Bucky born?”

“1917.” For once, Tony seemed to be choosing his words carefully, or at all. “He lived a few blocks down from you in Red Hook. He was in the 107th. At Azanno. They moved him before you got there.”

“Not before.” Steve didn’t recognize his own voice. It sounded rougher than it had when he first woke up after the ice. It sounded rougher than it had when he first woke up after that night in Bourbonnais that the Howlies had promised never to speak of again. “I _saw_ him.”

Steve could still remember the figure slumped in the back of Zola’s coupe as he made his escape from Azanno.

He had been _minutes_ too late.

He thought he already regretted the Fondue Conversation as much as much as physically possible, but knowing it had condemned Bucky to _seventy years_ of electrocution, and torture, and more electrocution, and Deadpool’s Britney Spears rants made Steve want to fling himself out of the quinjet without a ‘chute.

But he’d promised Bucky.

He’d promised Bucky a lot of things.

Tony nodded, and Steve hoped he hadn’t said all of that out loud (especially the part about the Fondue Conversation).

“Let’s go get the Winter Soldier.”

“Don’t call him that,” said Steve.

“Fine.” Tony waved a hand. “Let’s go get your boyfriend, Stud Muffin.”

He had still called Steve worse.


	5. Chapter Five

The Moscow Metro was a side project to the Moscow Underground ordered by Stalin in the 1920s. The Metro was designed in semi-conflicting styles of art deco and socialist realism to reflect the Stalinist ideal of _svetloe budushchee_ or “radiant future.” The Moscow Underground was its opposite.

Stalin needed an escape route in the event of a coup. When he learned of Hitler’s entrapment in his own bunker, Stalin expanded the underground. By the cold war era, it contained bomb shelters, escape routes, and enough infrastructure to protect thousands of people in the event of a direct nuclear attack on Russia. Unlike the underground in Seattle, or the Shanghai tunnels of Portland, there were no tours or gift shops. The Moscow Underground was sealed off, which was really for the best, because Steve got to work out some of his anger breaking down walls.

The Avengers had tried to leave him on the quinjet.

That was adorable.

They landed at the Sheremetyevo Airport and hailed a Yandex (the Russian Uber). The driver was an Americophile named Sasha, who gamely followed Bucky’s signal to the Dostoyevskaya Station in exchange for a round of autographs. The trip cost 1300 rubles, but Tony tipped Sasha 130000 rubles to drive with a vibranium foot. It was a weak joke, and Steve only managed a weak glare in response.

The Dostoyevskaya Station was full of murals depicting scenes from Dostoevsky's works. When it opened in 2010, people objected to a mural depicting a murder, to which the artist replied: “What did you want? Scenes of dancing? Dostoyevsky does not have them.”

Steve punched through the murder mural, and the Avengers followed him into the Metro Underground.

Tony kept talking about how he had finally gotten his tech to work underground and would have used it in the latest StarkPhone, but taking the subway was already annoying.

Steve wasn’t a fan of the cold, or the dark, or mariachi bands, but he did think it was a little egotistical of Tony to deliberately obstruct technological progression on the basis of something he could only find annoying _in theory._ e bit his tongue. Steve had already called Tony egotistical twice that day, and Natasha had given him a limit.

It was dark, the stone walls illuminated only by the repulsors from Tony’s backup suit. After a few minutes, caged lights began appearing at regular intervals, and Tony lowered his hands. They followed the lights, and Buck’s signal, down the passageway.

It ended in a stone archway. The Avengers hugged the walls to avoid detection. Somehow they’d managed a stealthy entrance. Tony was flying low instead of walking, and Thor had not been allowed to talk for the past twenty minutes.  

Beyond the archway, Steve could see a large room. The room contained seventeen people. Two men in white coats, thirteen men in tactical gear, and one man in a business suit.

Hydra wasn’t exactly an equal opportunity employer.

The last person in the room was Bucky, or at least, it had been.

Steve prayed to Ma, God, Shield, that Bucky wasn’t dead. He was moving, but that could have been a postmortem spasm. He was strapped to a chair, _the chair,_ with something attached to his head that was making his body convulse like a broken Tickle Me Elmo.

Steve also prayed that Bucky had some sort of bite guard under the mask, or his tongue would be ground meat, and Steve was suddenly regretting the hot dogs.

They made Bucky wear the mask so he couldn’t speak, but he could still _scream_. It was a muffled sound, like the least cheerful humming _ever_.

Steve attacked, spitting in the face of their stealthy entrance, and also literally spitting in one guy’s face, because biological warfare may have been against something called the “Geneva Convention” but it wasn’t like Steve could carry diseases, so he was pretty sure that gave him a pass.

He was also pretty sure that turning someone into a semi-literal killing machine counted as biological warfare.

Steve threw his shield at one of the men in tac suits, punching out two more before catching it on a ricochet. The man in the business suit, the one who looked like the Sundance Kid if he’d spent a little too much time dancing in the sun (Steve still hadn’t seen that movie), was obviously the most dangerous man in the room (except for maybe Bucky and _definitely_ Steve), but he wasn’t actually armed, or at least Steve thought he wasn’t until he said, “Soldat, ubey ikh.”

That was when Steve noticed that Bucky’s screams had stopped. (It was hard to hear over the screams of the Hydra soldiers, and the one whose face he had spit in was just being dramatic.) The _something_ attached to Bucky’s head had been raised and the straps had been undone. The chair was still on, current arcing from electrode to electrode.

Bucky stood, and his movements were so jerky they might still have been postmortem convulsions.

“Zimniy Soldat, ubey ikh,” the man in the business suit said again, and future people all looked the same to Steve, but was that the _motherfucking Secretary of Defense_?

Bucky looked at Steve and-

The Asset looked at Steve and attacked.

Steve raised the shield just in time to deflect a blow from the metal arm. While he was still top-heavy, the Asset swept his legs. The fight became too fast to follow, even for Steve. He was working on instinct, as if he was the one who had been programmed.

He barely registered the sounds of Avengers fighting Hydra agents somewhere behind him. Secretary Pierce stood off to the side, watching the fight with an idle expression on his face. He might as well have been at a wrestling match, waving one of those signs that Bone Saw fans liked so much. “If Spiderman wins, we riot!”

If Hydra won, if Steve died for nothing, if _Bucky_ died for nothing-

Captain America would _fucking riot_.  

Steve blocked another hit from the arm with the edge of his shield, then hooked it under the Asset’s extended arm for a hit to the face. While he was still stunned, Steve grabbed him by the mask and flipped him like a pancake. The Asset was rolling before he hit the ground, but he had to grab the chair for support to stand up. Steve had broken one of his legs.

When the Asset resurfaced, his mask was gone. He was wearing a bite guard. Steve shouldn’t have been surprised. Hydra had been doing this for a _long time_ , and they wanted the Asset’s tongue intact for reasons that Steve would _rather not think about ever_.

The Asset opened his mouth, and spat out the bite guard, along with a substantial amount of blood.

The Asset met Steve’s eyes and-

Bucky met Steve’s eyes and said, “Sputnik.”

He fell back into the chair, the weight of his body dropped the _something_ back onto his head, and he began convulsing again.

“No!” said Secretary Pierce.

Steve wasn’t too happy about it either, but before he could do anything, Pierce had shut down the chair.

“Soldat!” said Pierce. “Ubey ikh!”

This time, Bucky met Thor’s eyes.

Thor looked even more confused than usual, but Steve could read Bucky’s expression like it was a Tweet, and a mission brief, and he suddenly understood how hard it had been for Bucky to talk at first, because he could barely open his mouth to get the words out.

“Thor, shock him.”

To Thor’s credit, he didn’t make Steve say it again.

Electricity arced into Bucky’s body like tentacles. Steve turned to Secretary Pierce, the only man left standing, and dropped his shield. Steve picked him up, bodily, and threw him in between Thor and Bucky. Pierce was dead before he hit the floor.

Thor lowered his hands. Steve lurched forward. He could feel Bucky’s body shuddering under his hands. When it stopped moving, it stopped _completely_ , and Steve scrambled to feel that too-fast pulse.

He gathered Bucky in his arms, careful of his broken leg, and carried him back through the Moscow Underground. The Avengers followed him. Natasha had his shield. Tony had Secretary Pierce’s body, which, yeah, was probably important for some value of the word.

Steve carried Bucky past caged lights and the murder murals until they emerged in the sun. Instead of taking Bucky on the Metro, Tony called them another Yandex. It was Sasha again. Even he looked worried, although that may have been because Steve held Bucky in his lap the whole way to the airport, despite Natasha’s frantic muttering about how _Russia is different than America, and haven’t you seen enough camps, and-_

He didn’t care. Stalin himself could come back from the dead and try to take Bucky from him. Steve was kind of known for punching dictators.


	6. Chapter Six

“Ironman is the Strongest Avenger, this is Tower One. You’re cleared for takeoff.”

Thor piloted them out of the Sheremetyevo International Airport. Everyone else was crowded into the medbay, which was still just a cot, so Tony’s elbow was in Steve’s solar plexus, and Natasha’s head was in his armpit. Steve tried to apologize to her, but he ended up apologizing to Bruce’s butt.

Other than his broken leg, the only substantial physical injury that Bucky had sustained was to his tongue. Without the mouth guard to protect it, he had bitten clean through it. Steve had to tilt his body so Bucky wouldn’t drown in his own blood. By the time they got to the quinjet, the Captain America suit looked more like Iron Man’s.

“We’ll get him the best doctors. Neuroscientists, shrinks, therapy llamas. Whatever he needs,” said Tony, who was too upset to pretend he wasn’t generous.

“Thank you, Tony,” said Steve, who was too upset to pretend he wasn’t grateful.

Tony looked as though he had caught himself doing something vaguely shameful, like eating at Chick-fil-A. He shrugged. “Well, I am a genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist.”

“The philanthropist part doesn’t count if you just do it so that you can say you’re a philanthropist,” said Thor, showing a surprising amount of societal awareness. He hadn’t stopped staring at his hands since they left the Moscow Underground, which was problematic, because he was flying the quinjet.

Tony looked offended. “I also do it for the tax breaks.”

Ten days later, Steve was still sitting at Bucky’s bedside in the Avenger’s Tower medical wing. Tony had joked about having Dr. Cho give him a catheter too. He only stopped joking when Steve made a thoughtful noise.

Natasha relieved Steve from his vigil so he could go take a shower. Instead, he took out six and a half punching bags. Fury yelled at him because apparently they cost upwards of a hundred bucks a pop, and Tony refused to pay for them even though most of the time they were preventing him from becoming a punching bag.

Fury didn’t yell at him for very long, but that was just because Steve really needed a shower.

Tony had the therapy llama on call, but until Bucky woke up, there wasn’t much they could do. Dr. Cho ordered a CT scan. She couldn’t order an MRI, because: _magnets_ , but the CT scan didn’t show any abnormalities.

_The CT scan of a genetically enhanced supersoldier who had just been struck by lightning didn’t show any abnormalities._

There was some cortical atrophy, but none of the nerve damage, cortisol inflammation, or impaired hippocampus activity. Dr. Cho pinned it up next to Bucky’s earlier CT scans. It looked like a completely different brain. It would have looked like Clint’s brain, except it was somehow _less_ damaged. (Clint liked to participate in a game he referred to as “Ultimate Red Rover.”)

When Bucky woke up, he went from catatonia to total awareness in the time it took Steve for to get back from the bathroom. (He should have gotten that catheter.)

They hadn’t known which version of Bucky they would be talking to, so he was strapped to the bed with the reinforced four-point restraints they used whenever Steve tried to sign himself out AMA or Tony tried to drink the rubbing alcohol.

Bucky wasn't actively trying to kill anyone, so that was a good sign.

He looked like he was about to ask where he was, but decided not to because it was such a fucking cliché.

Bucky was craning his neck to look around the room, so Steve tried to make himself small in the way he used to do all the time, hunching his shoulders and bowing his head. It didn’t actually make him look smaller. It mostly just made him look like he was LARPing as a Ninja Turtle.

He hadn't done it as much since he met Bucky, because his size was finally good for more than just fighting (and getting to stand at the back of team pictures where Natasha can’t give him bunny ears, and reaching the top shelf where Tony hid the last of Pop Tarts, and being able to use Clint as an arm rest).

Steve brushed a lock of Bucky's really nice hair off of his face. Bucky still didn't try to kill him, which was starting to worry Steve because Bucky usually threatened to kill people when they messed up his hair.

“Bucky? How you doin’, pal?”

Bucky wasn't looking around the room anymore. Instead he was looking at Steve with a fixed intensity that was a lot less flattering than usual. It was like Bucky had stopped looking for the threat, but not because he’d realized there wasn't one.

In that moment, Steve knew that Bucky hadn't been about to ask _where_ he was.

It was such a fucking cliché.

“Who the hell is Bucky?"


	7. Chapter Seven

“Okay, look, said Tony. “I know Steve isn’t here, but we’re not Hydra, and I have a series of inductive arguments to prove it. One-”

“I know,” said Bucky.

Tony seemed to deflate a little, which was probably good for him.

“Oh.”

Bucky shrugged. “They’re basically Nazis, right? I figure they aren’t exactly equal opportunity employers.”

Natasha and Sam looked at each other and shrugged.

“Who’s Steve?” asked Bucky, and it sounded a more like, “Roast beef?” thanks to his injured tongue, but the Tower security system came with closed captioning, which was actually very thoughtful of Tony since it was almost certainly in deference to Clint’s deafness.

Steve had been deaf in one ear before the serum. He could sleep like a drunk baby in the middle of 1930s Brooklyn, when the only people getting any sleep were drunk babies. He could pretend not to hear his Ma when she tried to make him smoke his asthma cigarettes. When he needed peace and quiet, all he had to do was turn his head and maybe hum a little.

Sometimes he missed being deaf.

“Steve’s the one who ran screaming from the room,” said Tony.

Like right now, for example.

“He wasn’t screaming,” said Sam.

“He was screaming on the inside.”

Steve turned his head and hummed a little. He tried to come up with a good comeback for the next time he saw Tony, but it was hard to think over all his internal screaming.

Not to mention the humming.

Steven Grant Rogers, who never run away from a fight in his life (and had often run towards them), had all but fled the medbay. He had kicked the security personnel out of their own office, locked the door, and then shoved a chair under it, because everyone he knew could pick locks.

Steve had gone to the Security Office with the vague intention of deleting the footage of him literally running from his problems, but once he was there, he didn’t want to leave.

It was nice. There was a Keurig and a stress ball shaped like an anatomically correct heart, which was a little alarming, but very effective, especially when Steve imagined it belonged to Alexander Pierce. One of the Security Officers had a ficus.

“Is Steve okay?” asked Bucky, even though he was the one with a broken leg, and an injured tongue, and _amnesia._

“He’s Steve,” said Tony. “He hasn’t been okay since 1932. You really don’t remember him? Like, not even in a with-your-heart kind of way? Because I have money on this.”

Bruce glared at Tony, and _thank you_ , someone in the future still had manners. “The bet’s on hold until the participating parties don’t have brain damage.”

_Et tu, Bruce?_

“I don’t remember...” Bucky trailed off, frowning. “Anything? I don’t even know who the president is.”

“Don’t ask,” said Sam.

“I obviously know English. And… a little Samoan?”

Bucky loved _Moana_.

“You were in an accident,” said Natasha, even though there was nothing _accidental_ about it. “How you feeling?”

“Not feeling much of anything right now,” said Bucky. He was blinking like a paraplegic who had to use the bathroom.

They had given him supersoldier painkillers before his CT scan came back normal. Dr. Cho had to Narcan him, but no one would tell Steve what that meant, except for Tony who said, “It’s holy water for heroin addicts- doesn’t work unless you’re possessed.”

Steve was only seventy-percent sure that Tony wasn’t talking about actual possession. As far as he knew, Hydra hadn’t tried to summon any demons since 1944, when the whole Hellboy thing went to, well, hell. Then again, they had Bucky in 1944. Sixty-percent sure.

Bucky didn’t look possessed. His eyes were their normal ocean-during-a-storm-blue, although he seemed to be having a hard time keeping them open.

Natasha patted the blanket next to his broken leg. “We’ll let you get some sleep. You’re safe. We’re not Nazis. Everything else can wait.”

Bucky gave her the OK sign and promptly passed out.

“So what do we do?” asked Sam.

Tony started pacing. “Well, Pierce said _Zimniy Soldat_ , which means “Winter Soldier” in Russian, and with the new search term, Jarvis was able to find some more medical records in the file dump Natasha did after the all that Tom Fuckery in Washington. There was a reason Pierce didn't want Bucky back in the chair. The serum isn’t the same as Steve’s. It doesn’t affect his body. It affects his brain- makes it think his body can do more. Like… adrenaline instead of steroids. Steve is the ‘roider in this analogy. So if Bucky’s handlers left him in the chair too long because they were killer, or made a mistake, or were killed for making a mistake, then the secondary team had to start over.”

“Tony,” said Sam.

“Apparently, since his strength didn’t come from his muscles, most handlers didn’t even expend the extra nutrition and time out of cryostasis to maintain them, but I guess Pierce had a thing for six-packs.”

“ _Tony_ ,” said Sam.

“So we’ve got ourselves a good old-fashioned conundrum. Do we help Bucky recover his memories and risk the possibility of triggering the Winter Soldier? Even if he doesn’t go all Terminator on us, he would have a lifetime of trauma to deal with, and apparently punching bags are expensive. On the other hand, without the serum activated, he’s exposed to Hydra. Not to mention we would have to start his Future To Do List over from the beginning, and I cannot sit through another viewing of _Cars_. Larry the Cable Guy’s Mater is the Jar Jar Binks of animated film. There. I said it.”

“ _T_ _ony_ ,” said Sam, “That’s nauseating and all, but I meant what do we do about _Steve_?”

“Oh. Well, we’ll need to get him out of the Security Office.”

“Why?”

“For one thing it’s the _Security Office_ ,” said Tony. “For another thing, scent is the biggest trigger for memory, and Bucky has spent most of his freedom huffing Steve’s collarbones like they’re full of cocaine.”

Steve decided the Security Office was his new home.

He wouldn’t even have to move. He didn’t own very many things. His shield. Some Totino’s Pizza Rolls. His record collection. Tony’s socks.

He wouldn’t be giving up much.

Not compared to-

_Skip._

Steve felt as though he had known Bucky his whole life, even though it had been less than seven months. He wanted Bucky to remember those seven months- the readily-accessible edged weapons and Disney/Pixar movies, the lye talks and the Emoji Pain Scales, the trip to Coney Island. Steve wanted Bucky to remember him even if it meant remembering seventy years of TRAUMA-with-a-capital-T, and he had never felt so selfish in his life, not even when he saved the 107th just to prove he wasn’t a dancing monkey. Not even when he crashed a plane into the Atlantic just so he wouldn’t have to dance with a girl.

He didn’t like dancing, okay?

Sam said it wasn't his fault, although he never said _why_.

Steve knew what he had to do: He had to stay away from Bucky. He had to be as self-sacrificing as everyone thought he was. He had to be Captain America instead of Steve Rogers.

From the Security Office.

His new home.

Steve popped the stress ball.


	8. Chapter Eight

Steve was not allowed to live in the Security Office.  

He stayed for about half an hour before the security team flushed him out. He didn't think the smoke grenades were _entirely_ necessary.

"You know most people have security blankets," Natasha told him. "Not offices."

So Steve got a blanket, which may or may not have been the hospital blanket from Bucky's room, and he _knew_ his enhanced sense of smell was creepy, but he was stalking someone in their own home, so it was kind of a lost cause.

Steve had been studying spycraft with Natasha. He had gotten very good at staying upwind of Bucky.

It failed to occur to Steve that Bucky also had an enhanced sense of smell.

It didn't help that Steve still smelled like smoke.

"Steve?"

There was a noise like cat claws on a vet's table while Steve scrabbled for purchase in the air vent. He didn't know how Clint did it. His shoulders barely fit.

Steve exited the air vent looking guilty and a little cramped.

"I was practicing."

"Practicing what?" asked Bucky.

Steve massaged out a Charlie horse in his glute. "Spycraft."

Bucky nodded thoughtfully.

"You might want to try not humming."

"What?"

"You were humming. I think it was Hello, Dolly!"

Steve said, "I will take that under consideration," and then ran away.

Natasha cornered him later that day. Literally. He nearly punched her out of instinct. Fortunately, Steve's Ma had drilled manners into him more thoroughly than any drill instructors at Basic had taught him how to fight. He turned the aborted punch into a handshake.

Natasha let go of his hand, looking amused. "Steve, we didn't give you the lye talk, but we like to think you're smarter than that. He's going through a difficult time, and he could use all the friends he could get. You're avoiding him like he asked you to dance."

Natasha was a _spy._ Couldn't she be more _subtle_?

Bucky seemed to handling the difficult time much better than Steve. He still spotted Natasha in the weight room. He even joined her when she sparred.

He still napped with Clint in the air vents, and they also napped in the common room. Bucky liked to curl up under Tony's blanket ("Let's cuddle and talk about science"), until Steve had to steal it because his security blanket lost its scent.

Unfortunately, it also smelled a little like Tony.

Bucky still helped Tony with his work on the new tuning fork gyroscope for the quinjet. He even let Tony work on his arm.

This time, Bucky developed a friendship with Thor, even though it was mostly based on Thor baking him apology cookies. More often than not, Thor could be found in the common area kitchen, wearing Jane's apron ("Baking is science for hungry people") and measuring nutmeg. Then one day, Bucky baked Thor some wienerbrød as an apology for not knowing why Thor was apologizing. After that they were pretty much a two-person baking club. Steve was putting on weight, even though he only snuck into the kitchen for leftovers after everyone else had gone to bed. Natasha realized what he was doing and started eating all the leftovers. She never put on _any_ weight.

When he wasn't stalking Bucky or stress-eating wienerbrød, Steve spent most days on his floor. He missed the Security Office. He bought himself a ficus, but it died after two days.

Then Tony decided that Bucky's floor needed renovations.

"I need a sewing room," said Tony, who had never sewn up anything more complicated than himself.

Okay, so pretty complicated, but _still_.

"There are seven rooms on Bucky's floor," said Steve.

"I need seven sewing rooms," Tony said, without missing a beat.

"So turn another floor into sewing rooms."

"Nope, sorry, all out of guest rooms."

"You have a guest _tower_ in-"

"Sorry!" Tony shouted, like he couldn't hear Steve, even though the thing he couldn't hear Steve over was himself. "Gotta' go! I'm a very important and busy person!"

(Steve found him ten minutes later, playing Ultimate Red Rover with Clint.)

So Bucky moved into Steve's floor.

"Is that a plum tree?" asked Bucky.

"It's a ficus," said Steve. "Uh, figs, I think."

"Why is it dead?"

Steve repeated something Tony had said to Clint after their game. "This is why we can't have nice things."

"Hmm," said Bucky. "If I save it, can I use the figs to make jam for my wienerbrød?"

Figs were the coconut oil of the twenties, so Steve's Ma had forced almost as many Fig Newtons on him as asthma cigarettes.

"That sounds swell," he said, and then hated himself.

Steve and Bucky redeveloped their friendship, more tentative than before. Steve's presence didn't bring back any of Bucky's memories. Neither did his smell, not even when they curled up on the couch to restart Bucky's Future To Do List.

Steve decided that didn't matter. He had finally found his- a best friend after seventy years of being alone. Seven months was nothing.

Bucky was better off without his memories, even if that meant he was also without the effects of the serum. To better protect him from Hydra, Nat and Clint taught them all how to hide weapons on their person, and it was much less uncomfortable than anticipated. It involved custom underwear, which Tony sewed for them in his seven new sewing rooms.

They were all fully armed for their second trip to Coney Island.

This time, they avoided the rides that came with cages and lapbar restraints. They spent most of the day lying on the beach, people watching, and allowing sand to get in places it had no right to be.

On their way back from the bathroom, Tony said, "Whack-a-Mole," and Steve sighed.

"We should play," said Bruce, who secretly enjoyed smashing things even when he wasn't Hulked out. (They always gave him their bubble wrap.)

Tony got some quarters from a machine, muttering about how cash currency was obsolete, like record players and respect for medical professionals.

Bucky took the first turn.

"I've never played this before," he said, even though he was very good at whacking moles.

"It was invented in 1976," Natasha told him.

Bucky looked frustrated, even though he was very, _very_ good at whacking moles. "Then why does this seem so familiar?"

He hit a mole a little too hard and machine made a noise that sounded unnatural, even for a computerized rodent.

Bucky stopped and sat down in the middle of the People's Playground.

Steve crouched down so they were eye level. Bucky's eyes were glazed over like the fried pies he and Thor had made for breakfast. Apple, because everyone was a goddamn comedian.

"Bucky?"

Bucky looked like wasn't sure, and Steve wondered if maybe he'd gotten himself with the mallet when no one was looking.

They took Bucky home. Dr. Cho checked him out. She found no evidence of cranial trauma, but she did another CT scan anyway. Steve knew what they scans would show before they came back, because Bucky wasn't talking. He wasn't even humming.

When Bucky finally spoke, his voice was scratchier than the sand in Steve's custom underwear.

"I remember."

"How much?" asked Steve.

Bucky shook his head. "Just you. I know- I know about Hydra, but I don't remember..."

Steve let out a sigh of relief and started undoing the four-point restraints.

"Wait," he said. "Whack-a-Mole reminded you of _me_?"

Bucky shrugged. "Well, you get hit in the head a lot, and you keep popping back up anyway."

Steve opened his mouth to argue, but then shut it without saying anything. Whatever he said, it would probably just make Sam laugh harder.

Then Bucky kissed him, and Steve kind of wished he'd left his mouth open.

Kissing Bucky was nothing like fireworks.

Fireworks were loud, and scary, and Steve would never understand why one of the most patriotic holidays celebrated with something that gave flashbacks to half of the veterans he'd met.

Bucky pulled back.

"Do you want to go steady?" Steve asked, and then hated himself.

"That sounds swell," Bucky, and it should have made Steve hate _him_ , but instead Steve hated _everything_ a little less. Even himself, because if Bucky liked him, he must have some redeeming qualities.

(Bucky also liked figs and Whack-a-Mole and had severe brain damage, but that was easy to forget when he kissed Steve again.)

The Avengers actually gave them some privacy, as sure a sign of the apocalypse as Wolverine and T'Challa getting along.

Steve still hated himself a _little_ so he said, "You're from the twenties, even if you don't remember it. You're okay with this? Kissing another fella'?"

Bucky shrugged. "Hydra wasn't exactly an equal opportunity employer."

Steve winced.

"Sorry, Stevie."

"You have nothing to apologize for."

Bucky was wincing too, but Steve didn't think it was for the same reason. "Steve, I thought that they never- that I never killed- I've been doing it for _decades_. I don't remember, but I remember the others talking about it. How can you even look at me?"

"Well, see, the serum fixed my vision up real good."

Steve was joking, because the only alternative was crying, and that was not a recommended flirting technique.

Bucky kissed him again, a little desperately.

"I think I wanted to do that for a while," he said when they parted, "but I remembered my handlers..."

"Do you still want to-" Steve couldn't think of another way to say it than "go steady."

Bucky gave him a look. "Hydra never took me dancin' Stevie."

"I'm not taking you dancing either," Steve said quickly, and Bucky laughed again. Steve hadn't been laughed at so much since the Spangles Circuit, but instead of making him feel 5'4" all over again, it made him feel taller than Avengers Tower. He was the one making Bucky smile like _that_.

"I guess we'll just have to stay in then," Bucky said, smiling like _that_ , and his mouth was generous in every sense of the word.

Steve blushed. "You- you okay with that?"

Bucky turned somber for a moment. "I'm okay. Now I just remember remembering. It's not so bad."

This time, Steve kissed Bucky. They only broke apart for breath, so thanks to the serum, it was a good fifteen minutes later. They stayed close, so close they were dizzy with each other's CO2.

"That's it," said Bucky. "My heart rate is never going down."

"Your heart rate is always like that," Steve was joking again, but he could feel Bucky's heart, fast and fluttering, same as his eyelashes when he wanted something. "What are you so scared of?"

"You," said Bucky.

"Why are you scared of me?"

"Because I think you could break my heart."

"I would die first," Steve said, dramatic as a goddamn Nazi, but Bucky just huffed a laugh.

"Don't do that, dumbass. That would break my heart."

 

        


End file.
